Unremembered Review

TITLE Unremembered (Unremembered #1)
AUTHOR Jessica Brody
PUBLICATION March 5th 2013 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
READ February 18 to 19, 2013
SOURCE From the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The only thing worse than forgetting her past... is remembering it.

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, Seraphina struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

From popular young adult author, Jessica Brody comes a mesmerizing and suspenseful new series, set in a world where science knows no boundaries, memories are manipulated, and true love can never be forgotten.

Unremembered is that book that you read and you feel like you are on the verge of the story being really great, and you can sense that the shift into epic territory is just around the next corner but it never really gets there. I’ll admit I had fun reading this one and I breezed through it pretty fast but I can’t honestly say that I ever really cared for it aside from just wanting to know what happens next just so that I would know.

We meet our MC, Violet/Seraphina/Sera, just as she is waking up finding herself in the ocean after what appears to be a plane crash. She is found to be the only survivor of said crash and has come to with no memory at all of who she was or why she was on this plane that there was no record of her being on. She’s released from the hospital and put into foster care because no next of kin has come forth after her photo was spread nationally and from there her past starts to slowly creep forth. I can’t say that I really cared for Sera; she constantly felt very monotone to me and empty. There were no emotions that I could really connect to and even her love and history with Zen fell a bit short for me. She made some really dumb decisions that had me rolling my eyes and her rationalization for them had me wanting to pull my hair out. Here is my favorite line:
“I've been so preoccupied with finding Zen. Saving Zen. Protecting Zen. I didn't even stop to think about my own future.” -Quoted from an ARC
Being that I didn’t feel the connection between Sera and Zen I was bothered at the fact that this girl was literally going to throw her life away for this guy, without a thought, because she isn’t important and he is! With all that was going on in her life and her freaking amnesia after surviving a plane crash I think the girl should have been trying to figure herself out rather than focussing on some guy she doesn't  even remember. The one redeeming character that got a few chuckles out of me was Cody, her foster brother. He was hilarious and had no filter from his brain to his mouth, the things that came out of his mouth were pretty comical.

The big twist in the novel did take me by surprise but that whole reveal section felt like a huge info dump and I couldn’t wrap my head around all the details that were thrown at us in that short time. I admit that I did like where the story went and of all the scenarios I had thought up in my head, it was not one of them but I just wish it was handled a bit better, maybe a bit slower. That’s all I’m going to say about that because I am getting dangerously close to spoiler territory here and I don’t want to ruin anything.

While this one started out as an exciting read that captured my interest immediately, it quickly became a very passive read that I was just trying to get through. I like where the story went in the end but the road to get there (and during the reveal) were much too rocky for my taste. Had there been some characters that I could have really liked and gotten emotionally invested in I think I would have cared more about the events that unfolded but as it stands this was a very weak read for me and one that I can’t recommend.